Homeschool questions

[2blacklabs]

So excited to see Mr. & Mrs. launch into homeschooling; I know they will be huge resources for information!

Anyway, we will be homeschooling in the Fall, though we plan to begin a bit in the summer to compensate for some planned travel in the Fall.  I have some questions for people who homeschool -

What resources do you use for foreign languages?  We're looking for more advanced resources as our daughter has been in immersion school since age 4. 

Do many of you travel and homeschool?  How does that work?  My thought is to build the travel into her curriculum and catch up on anything when we return if we fall behind too much.  We hope to travel for 6 weeks at a stretch and then return home. 

Do you end up home-schooling year round since life is learning?  That's how it appears to me as I've been reading books and doing research on curriculums.  I like it, actually, as then it's easier to travel and simply leave behind certain projects knowing we have plenty of time.

Thanks for any help! 

[mxt0133]

6 week adventures sounds awesome!

We are homeschooling but our oldest is only 4.  We make sure to do activities that are not really play, for him it is, for us is reading, writing, counting, numbers, matching, puzzles, and mazes, he loves trying to get out of mazes!

When we travel we bring some "material" with us but we always try and tie it so what we just learned or are new to us.  We focus more on the new environment and things we don't normally encounter, like snow when they were back east a few weeks ago.

[KD]

We homeschooled year round but only half days and took school work along on short 'to family' travels.  School work done around Gran's table.

Week long vacations - no school. 

[Toffeemama]

Traveling would be a great way to homeschool!  It sounds like a super opportunity to base parts of the schooling around wherever you happen to be at the time, and you can do that alongside the standard reading and math.  If you're in the U.S., you'll need to look at your state's homeschooling laws to make sure you keep to the requirements(such as annual tests or a log of your curriculum).  Standardized tests only really check the students' reading and math though, so as long as you're keeping your child around grade level, the rest of school time is up to you and your child.

We can't travel much, but I keep the schooling going pretty much year-round, with short breaks throughout.  The school time is pretty lax during the summer though, with little "curriculum learning" and more educational games and library visits.

[AllieVaulter]

I don't have kids yet, but I'm planning on homeschooling and I think using travel for education sounds like a fantastic idea.  A lot of people on this forum are math/science focused, but traveling would be a great way to explore language, history, culture, and geography.  AND it would actually be INTERESTING!  Lots of kids find these subjects boring because they're learning it from a textbook.  But being in a new place and seeing the battlefields, architectural ruins, talking to native speakers, using maps to plan your travels...  not only is it more engaging, but your child is more likely to remember it! 

When I started traveling (as an adult) I kept a travel diary.  I'd draw a map of the country I was going to be in with important locations (mountains, rivers, capital, big cities etc., as well as the towns I would be traveling to).  I often did this before I left home just to get to know the new country a little bit better.  I'd also make a list of words and phrases in whatever language they spoke (I'd leave a bit of room here to add to it as I traveled and learned more).  Once I left home, I'd spend some time each night taking notes on my day.  Where I went, what I saw, what the people were like...  But I also took notes on what I learned.  When I'd visit a museum or take a tour, I'd learn all sorts of interesting facts.  Writing them down helped to organize my thoughts as well as make it a little more likely I'll remember (and if I forget, I can always go back and look it up!).  I found it so enjoyable and helpful, that I've continued to do this even when I'm just going on a trip within the USA.  Finding a fun journal to take notes in is a normal part of my pre-trip planning process.  I don't normally keep a diary, but I always do travel diaries! 

[zolotiyeruki]

My wife homeschools our 3.5 oldest (the 4-year-old participates some of the time).  Our current schedule is 3-weeks-on, 1-week-off.  It also changes based on current needs and travel plans, and isn't as strict during the summer months.  We've never gone on an extended trip, but we have at times brought some of the homeschooling materials/supplies with us on week-long trips.

There are some good homeschooling threads over in the mini-money-mustache subforum.  There appears to be a fair number of mustachians who homeschool.

[bigalsmith101]

...I have some questions for people who homeschool -

What resources do you use for foreign languages?  We're looking for more advanced resources as our daughter has been in immersion school since age 4. 

Do many of you travel and homeschool?  How does that work?  My thought is to build the travel into her curriculum and catch up on anything when we return if we fall behind too much.  We hope to travel for 6 weeks at a stretch and then return home. 

Thanks for any help!

I DREAM of this. Having traveled extensively in my formative years directly out of university, I dream of traveling with my future children. I've met several families on my adventures that did the same. They were all traveling for 6mo or longer. I met 3 families in South America, one in Australia, and another in Asia. All were homeschooling their children, and all were using travel as part of their education structure.

I'm fluent in Spanish (something my wife is jealous of, so I tell her to get back to studying), and she has made me commit to speaking to our children in Spanish from day one. They will only get to speak to dad in Spanish, and mom in English. It's gonna be super weird in public! But I've agreed. A foreign language is a real asset in life, especially if you travel!

My projected FIRE date will take me to a date where I expect to have a couple children around 3-5years old. And travel after FIRE will be a major incentive for us.

I too would like to hear what resources are used for foreign language education.

[Toffeemama]

When we do foreign language, we use Duolingo.  It's free, and while it doesn't really teach much of sentence structure(you pretty much have to learn it trial-and-error), it's great for learning new words, and actually hearing them pronounced.  There's a thriving community too; any questions about a word or sentence are often answered in the comments section.

If I were more serious about foreign language learning, I'd try to find some kid's shows in that language too.  Shows for kids are often simplistic enough to pick up what they're saying, but you still get accurate native speech.

[2blacklabs]

Thank you for all the great responses.  I envy those of you with a fluency in a second language.  Also, love the idea of a travel journal!

On a chairlift ride in Breck this past weekend, I learned of this new app pasted below for kids aged 2 -6 to learn and explore a foreign language.  We are just playing around with it now but I like that it has English, French, Mandarin, Spanish and Arabic as an option.  My daughter is older than the targeted audience and the mandarin was too easy but the Spanish was fun for her so far.

http://en.paccaalpaca.com/

We do use Duolingo for Spanish (no mandarin there yet) but we finally had to hire a tutor to come to the house once a week to help us with 1st, 2nd and 3rd person subject pronouns along with a few other problem areas.  I used a site called Wyzant to find the tutor and was able to negotiate but still hoping to find a better online resource. 

I plan to head over the mini-mustachians area and do a better search for homeschooling threads. 

[forummm]

I have known many homeschoolers. I haven't known any that traveled a lot, but it seems like it would be incredibly easy to continue to do school while traveling. When you remove a lot of the distractions and time wasted in traditional school environments, the students don't need to spend 8 hours a day in class time to learn as much or more. So even just a few hours a day studying could be enough. And you can build in lessons about the food, history, culture, language, etc, of wherever you were travelling--so it wouldn't even seem like school, but they would be learning the whole time.

You could learn a lot of the aspects of foreign language through Duolingo, textbooks, Rosetta Stone, or other similar materials. But visiting and staying for long terms in foreign locales will be the best language education you could get. Combining FIRE plus homeschooling would allow for incredible immersive educational opportunities for the kids. You could live anywhere for 3, 6, 12 months, or more.